Friday, November 26, 2010

Why are people so hooked on it? It's here today and gone tomorrow and is never affordable. I haven't bought any new clothes in....I don't know when.

Okay, sure some trends look really nice, but only if you have the looks to pull it off. Me, I don't. I just go with what's comfortable to wear and don't worry about what others think looks good or what trend is trendy today. Personally, to keep up with what's what in the fashion world (which only puts money in the fashion designer's pocket) I'd go bankrupt and die of a heart attack from worrying about whether I have the right style or not.

Same goes for people on talk shows when the topic is makeover. When the makeover is done, who is going to pay to keep it that way? That's right, the makeoveree (and yes, I made that up). Usually it's some family member who's embarrassed by what the person is choosing to wear. I say leave them alone and let them wear what they want, it's none of your business. And if you're embarrassed to be seen with your mom because of her wardrobe/hairstyle/whatever, then YOU pay to make her over, then YOU buy her the appropriate clothes to maintain the look. Don't go all whiny and say "Mom, you need to change your look." unless you're prepared to pay for said new look, especially if mom doesn't want to/can't afford to change her look.

Where did this mini rant come from? I came across an article titled "Would you wear ankle socks with heels?" Sure, it was from last year or something, but the title just set me on edge. Who cares if I would or wouldn't wear this or that? It's no one's business but my own. To that article I say I'll wear whatever I want to wear and if people don't want to look at it, they can find something else to look at. Who cares if it makes my short legs look shorter or if it makes me look bigger than I already am? If I like it and it's comfortable then I'll wear it. Those women who go sighing off saying "Oh that makes her legs look sooooooo long!" make we want to puke, literally. "Don't wear socks like that with heels, it'll just make your legs look shorter." Who the *bleep* cares? Wear whatever you want and if someone tells you it's wrong or makes you look <insert description here>, tell them to *bleep* off.

You know, I really severely dislike this group, and I know I'm not alone. He and his so-called Christian group go around protesting at soldier's funerals, protest at gay gatherings, all the while toting signs that read "God hates fags." That right there proves that they just are not Christians, because nowhere in the bible does it say that God hates fags. What it does state is that God has said that homosexuality is an abomination, but it does not state that God hates the homosexual-those are two different things.

If God hated homosexuals, then the passage that reads in John 3:16 would be a lie.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Bolding mine. If God hated homosexuals then that means they aren't included in the 'whosoever' mentioned in the above passage. Of course then there is also the condition for the everlasting life-believing on Him. People keep asking why a loving God would send people to hell and I say that He doesn't, they send themselves when they refuse to believe that above, simple passage. However, that one word, whosoever, excludes no one as long as they believe on His son, Jesus Christ, and that He died in their place, then rose from the grave so that one day we, too, may rise from the grave and join Him with the Father.

Yes, homosexuality is a sin, but God does not hate homosexuals. He doesn't hate Reverend Phelps and Co. either for the incorrect message they're spreading.

Oh, and those words quoted above came from the mouth of Jesus Christ, and since He and the Father are one, then one can assume that they also came from the Father's mouth.

This may earn me some flames if anyone reads this, but I believe that if a homosexual gets saved, truly saved, then the Father in their (the homosexual) heart would purge the homosexuality from them. It may not happen overnight, but it would happen. I'm not a hater of the homosexual like the Phelps bunch, they're people too, but I also don't go around condemning them-they make their choices just like everyone else and deserve to be treated with the respect that any other human being on this earth should be treated with, but aren't.

God calls many actions abominations and homosexuality is just one of them, and the Phelps bunch have fixated upon it. He calls many actions abominations, but nowhere does He call people abominations.

I really actually, sorta hope that some Phelps people read this, maybe they can explain how homosexuals are excluded from 'whosoever'. Myself, I'm ashamed that they affiliate themselves with Baptists, because this is not what Baptists believe. I can tell you right now that most true Baptists condemn what the Phelps group does as much as anyone else does.

And how would they explain this....

2 Peter 3:9

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance

Where in 'any' and 'all' are homosexuals excluded? That verse basically means that He's not being lazy, He's not being slow, but He's being patient because He doesn't want anyone to go to hell, He wants everyone to repent. Sounds like that includes homosexuals, murderers, rapists, liars, cheaters, Reverend Phelps and co., etc...

God hates sin, not the sinner. Reverend Phelps seems to have forgotten that, or he never knew it in the first place, or his bible for some reason left those verses out.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

I like to play an online card game called Three Hills Solitaire. If you've ever played Pyramid Solitaire then I shouldn't have to explain it-it's a solitaire game that doesn't require a lot of thinking as long as you can count. Aces, of course, are high or low, depending. Scoring is simple-the bigger runs score more, clearing a hill gets you a bonus and winning streaks net bonuses. Any cards left after you clear all three hills also nets a bonus-however many there are multiplies your score by that much-IOW, if you have 5 cards left then your final score is multiplied by 5.

In Three Hills, you get three interlocking pyramids to play from and the rules are basically the same, except you can use a wild card (named Oogah), if you can catch him, or buy him. The game gives you some rubies, and when you use them up you'll have to purchase more. I don't know how much they cost because I don't buy them, I just attempt to snag Oogah whenever he pops up behind a hill. You can only have one Oogah at a time, but you can use as many as you need, if you purchase rubies because you can then purchase Oogah as you need him. He sits in a little cage next to the playing field if you happen to have him and he's kind of cute when he jumps up and down trying to get out of it. He makes cute little noises and when you need him and let him out he goes "Woohoo!" and jumps on the pile.

There's also another little perk in this game. As you win a game, a little caterpillar starts crawling up a tree. If you win four games in a row, it reaches the top and turns into a cocoon. If you win the next game, you set the butterfly free from its cocoon and it flies away. You get different colored butterflies-I've gotten yellow, blue, red, green pink and purple.

In the lower levels it was quite easy to set the butterfly free, but now that I've gotten past level 15 (I think I'm at 17) it's gotten much harder to even win two games in a row. And if I do manage to win 4 in a row I hardly ever win the fifth game. Without Oogah now and then I wouldn't even be able to win some of them. I never use him unless I only have one upturned card on the playing field and the last card isn't a match, or if I have two upturned cards that will play-such as a 3 and a 4. I guess I'm not doing too badly, my win percentage is 51%, so I'm no slouch, I just hope I can continue to keep that up the higher I go.

Oh, and the game is at a site called Wonderhill, and is a Facebook application.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Did you ever put something down, leave it there, and when you go back to get it, it isn't there anymore and everyone claims they didn't touch it? Then after much fruitless searching, you find it exactly where you left it?

That's what happened to my cell phone. For a whole week I could not find it. I thought I'd put it in my bag, but I turned it inside-out. I thought maybe I moved it to my purse and dug through it, several time I might add, up to and including pulling stuff out of it. Then, exactly a week after it went missing, I looked in my purse again and there it was, in the bottom of it. Now, I will say that I have a black silicone cover on it so it would be hard to see, however any time it's touched, the screen and buttons light up. Anyway, it needed to be recharged, but is otherwise working fine.

It reminds me of that Twilight Zone episode where things disappear from where they're put and reappear later.

Peter chose to go back with Walternate. I can't blame him. He didn't know that September told Walter that he could never go back, that the consequences would be disastrous, but Peter wouldn't have listened once he figured out he'd been lied to all of his life. So Walter holds as much blame as Peter does for his choosing to go back. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and he should have told Peter where he came from, why he was here and why he couldn't go back once he would have been old enough to understand. Then again, we always watch these things as if they're really happening and we always have our own ideas about what should have happened, not thinking about who's writing it and what their vision of it all is. Everything is all written out and scripted and there's nothing we can do about it except lament over how we could have done such and such better or how so-and-so is so wrong for what he did. Even the actors don't have as much control over their characters as they'd probably like to have and Joshua Jackson is no exception. I don't know how he feels about how Peter was written in the past, but I do know that he's at least the tiniest bit perturbed that the writers have written it so that Peter has been fooled by Red for a lot longer than he should have been and I've been saying that for a long time myself.

My feelings on the subject: both Walter and Peter were dumbed-down so that Red could remain undiscovered for longer and nothing anyone can say to me will convince me otherwise. Actually, several people agree with me, or haven't disputed it, when I said as much in review threads on the episodes at Ex Isle, a BBS that I frequent and am a Supermod at-Supermod being a moderator who can moderate any forum on the board, but who doesn't have administrative privileges. I can do anything the moderators can do, but the moderators are restricted to their assigned forums.

Why do I think that the two geniuses have been dumbed-down? Well, both of them have known Olivia for two years at the very least. Walter knows Olivia's moods without her ever having to say anything and Peter was falling in love with her through both years-yes, it was very subtle, and I still saw it, and I liked it. Peter, upon first meeting and speaking with Red, commented that her eyes were a different shade than Olivia's-one had darker eyes than the other, I can't remember which-then he didn't notice it once the switch was made? I've heard that love is blind, but we're talking about two geniuses here, who are two very observant men to boot, and neither of them, when they notice that the Olivia who is with them is different from the one that they've known for two years, think or say anything about it? Well, I admit that Peter did say something to Red about how different she was, but seemed to accept her (rather weak) explanation that crossing over had changed her. He never seemed to question it again-even when she got Casablanca wrong by asking if it was Ronald Reagan who starred in it. That should have been a trigger right there that she was from the other side, but no, he had to get a call from a cleaning lady in NY giving him Olivia's message before the light bulb went off and he's thinking "Oh shit, I'm f---ing the wrong Olivia!"

I know that was a crude way to put that, but it's no less true. I could pretty it up and instead say that he's thinking "Uh oh, I'm sleeping with the enemy!" but I'll stick with my first thought because that's what she's doing, she got desperate after he told her that how different he found her, and thus threw herself at him. She's supposed to have a fiance-at least that's what Wiki said that Frank is, he's at least her boyfriend, yet she had no trouble dragging Peter into her bed to protect her identity. I wonder how Frank will feel about that, or if she'll even tell him. Personally, I don't think having her throw herself at Peter like a cat in heat was necessary and since she did, I'm going to fault him again for not seeing that his Olivia would not have done that. Sure, she kissed him when she went to get him, but not like Red did when she threw herself at him. Olivia's kiss was full of emotion and Red's was nothing more than calculated to evoke the reaction that it did-namely get him horny and distracted and forget that he was becoming suspicious of her.

Oh well, writers often contradict themselves to make a story go the way they want it to go, I guess Fringe is no different.

So, I've had some minor spoilers concerning future Fringe. Walternate is going to want to dissect Olivia to get at the Cortexiphan in her brain and Broyles is going to save her. Whether he does this because he's started questioning Walternate's methods or because he's paying her back for catching those kidnappers and saving his son remains to be seen. If he's anything like her Broyles, I'd vote for the first, he seems like an intelligent man who would question his leaders, especially if said leader was keeping vital information from him. I guess we'll see.

Also this will delay the real Peter/Olivia get-together as, understandably, he'll feel awful about letting himself be fooled by Red. Personally, I hope they do get together, though that isn't the sentiment of my friend, who still refuses to watch the show. She asks me questions, usually about whether Olivia is herself again, which is the point she wants to start watching again, though she wants her home too. She could care less if she gets together with Peter because she considers him an unworthy mate.

I think I should also explain here that her idea of worthy mate is not like most other people's. She has a unique view of the world and doesn't see things in quite the same way that the majority of us see it. She blames everything that's happened on Peter and his choosing to go back to Red universe with Walternate. She believes he betrayed everyone by doing so and that makes him unworthy. My feelings on the matter are that yes, he shares blame, but it isn't all his fault. Walter brought him back-to save his life, to be sure-but then he gave in to his wife and kept him instead of taking him back like he'd intended. To top it off, he never told Peter the truth, he figured it out on his own before Walter screwed up enough courage to tell him. Now, given all that, I can't blame him for wanting to go back. Come to think of it, Olivia probably shares a little blame herself for choosing not to tell Peter once she saw the glimmer around him, telling her that he was from the other side. In any case, Peter should not have all the blame put on him for what happened, he reacted like almost anyone would in that situation and I can't fault him for that. My friend can because she would have reacted differently and she's judging him by how she would have reacted, I can't fault that either. I think we all judge other people by what we would have done in a similar situation and that doesn't make one person more right than the other.

Anyway, on to moving Fringe to Friday nights. I don't think it conflicts with anything Hub likes to watch, so I'll just warn him ahead of time so he'll know. I don't think there will be a problem and if there is then I'll just catch it on Hulu/Fox website when it goes up. I'll get to see it one way or another. I only hope moving it around like that isn't a signal that it's coming to the end of its run. Personally, I don't like Idol and would rather it stayed where it was. Personally, I don't like many shows at all and usually watch History or Science channel when the documentaries are on, if I watch anything at all. I doubt Idol will miss my viewership since they have plenty of sqeeing fans to keep their ratings up. I have nothing against a young person wanting to become a pop star, but some of them, once they have, have let the stardom go to their heads-take that redheaded male, can't even remember his name-he's developed a cult following and I just don't see it. Sure, he has a nice voice and he had a nice personality, until he became popular. Then he turned into someone barely recognizable from the person who started out. And Taylor Swift-I think she won too. That girl gets on my nerves something awful, but she's got girls wanting to be like her and guys wanting to do her. I just don't see it. Her videos are trashy and mostly feature her rolling around, either on a bed or on the ground, while singing. The clothes are hideous and the makeup even worse.

Oh well, people are lemmings and sometimes follow the most idiotic things and nothing I say or do will change that.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Well, mostly. But Fringe is the only show I actually sit and watch when it's on. Why is it when I get interested in a show it gets cancelled? That's happened several times over the years-I get interested in a show, and it gets cancelled. I guess that's the reason I stopped watching television so much, every time I started liking a show it would get cancelled.

I will admit to watching daytime soaps years ago like it was an addiction. However they got to where they were just getting so stupid, I mean, everyone has slept with everyone else, gotten married, divorced, married again, cheated and got divorced again, left town, come back, died and still come back. Those shows are living cliffhangers though, and that made me leave most of all-every day the show would stop on a cliffhanger. I guess that was to keep the viewer coming back to see what would happen next, but geez, I really, really hate cliffhangers-I think I've said that before, but it bears repeating. I mean, what if a show ended its season on a cliffhanger and then didn't get picked up for another season, like what happened with Farscape? I never really watched it while it was playing, just caught the odd episode once in awhile, but I heard through a friend of mine that I speak with over MSN that the fallout from that happening made the producers go back about four years later and make a miniseries to resolve that cliffhanger.

I just hope Fringe resolves this problem with the merging parallel universes before Fox decides they're not going to pick them up for another season. And stop with the cliffhangers already! If you have to rely on cliffhangers to keep the audience coming back, you're doomed anyway. One day your show's fingers are going to slip off that cliff before the next season, then what are you going to do? There are no safety nets at the bottom of a cliff.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

I hope it doesn't mean the end for this show, seems every time a show gets moved to Friday on Fox it doesn't make it. If it doesn't I hope the writers resolve this conflict-either have Red universe destroyed or have them find a way to fix the rifts and save both universes, then give Peter and Olivia their happy-ever-after.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Hub is watching WWE and it's about to make me want to barf. Yes, I know it's all scripted, but Edge covering a guy tied to a wheelchair in food is about the most idiotic, disgusting thing I've ever seen. Whoever is scripting that needs to have their ass whipped, I do not want to see this stuff, I'd rather see wrestling matches, but the WWE has degenerated to a bunch of idiots getting up in the ring and running their mouths or pretending to look around for their 'abducted father' or said 'father' being covered in food.

I guess that's what you call what me and my friend do. Right now she's sending me snippets to proof and I correct spelling mistakes. If she wants me to proof the whole story, then I'd also proof for grammar and clean it up to where it's more readable. It's actually fun, we work it out over MSN when she wants to add in characters that she thinks I have a better grasp on than she does, then she adds it into her story.

The way my personal writing works is that I'll go through phases-I'll feel like writing for weeks at a time, then stop for awhile, up to a year or more at a time. I guess that's one reason that I would never make it as a writer-even if my writing was good enough to sell, I'm too inconsistent with it. I just write for my own amusement anyway and only share a tiny part of it with the public. Anyone who cared to look on my computer would find unfinished story after story after story. Well, so what? It's not like I have a deadline and if they're unfinished then that means I'll always have something to do when I feel like it.

It's no one's business but mine anyway, just like my opinions of Fringe. I can post them here anytime I like and no one can make me remove them unless they violate ToS, which they don't.

Anyway, I think Fringe is still a very good show, I just don't agree with what they're doing with Olivia. I enjoy watching the show, but they're so fond of cliffhangers that I almost don't want to watch it anymore. If a show is good enough, they shouldn't need to rely on cliffhangers to keep the audience watching. Besides, it could backfire on them like it did with Farscape-they ended a season on a cliffhanger and the show got cancelled. There was such a public outcry over it that they had to come back with a miniseries or something to resolve the cliffhanger. I hope this doesn't happen to Fringe.

Okay, I think I've calmed down enough from my disappointment in this episode to write something coherent now, even if no one ever reads it.

I'm not talking about the episode being bad, it wasn't really, the main plot with the kidnapper(s) was very entertaining. My disappointment stems from Olivia not being able to stay home once she cortexiphans herself. Why do the writers insist on putting her back at square one, practically?

And Peter...oh Peter, please don't get me started on Peter. I wanted to slap him, hard, when he didn't immediately pick up that something was wrong when Red said that Ronald Reagan was in Casablanca. Her hurried "I was kidding." Should have only made him that much more suspicious, but no, he kisses her and snuggles down with her just before his phone rings. It's the cleaning lady from the souvenir shop on Liberty Island. Olivia managed to convey to her his number and asked her to give him a message-"She's trapped in the other universe." THEN you see the light bulb go off in his head-"Hey, I'm sleeping with the wrong Olivia!"

The only saving grace to this whole "he's suddenly so dense a rock would shatter if it hit him in the head.' is that even the actor is a bit perturbed over it. Geez, when Peter first met Red after going over with Walternate, he commented to her that her eyes were a different shade than Olivia's-one Olivia has darker eyes than the other, I can't remember which one, but he didn't seem to notice that discrepancy after the switch and I just can't imagine why the writers would make such a faux pas. If he noticed it upon first meeting, why was he suddenly blind to it when she switched?

And that's where it ends. Writers, this damsel in distress thing is getting boring. And I'm not ranting too badly about it this time since I picked up some spoilers for the next one come December, namely that she's going to be almost dissected but RedBroyles will save her. I saw something to that effect the minute he uttered "I'll never forget what you did." after she saved that abducted boy. I just knew that he would be her other ally over there and that he might somehow help send her home without Peter going over there to try to play the hero and possibly getting captured himself and forced/blackmailed into activating the machine. I'm glad I learned he won't have a hand in getting her back home because that would just be too predictable-he knows good and well that he can't set foot in Red universe again because he's the only one who can activate the doomsday machine, so unless he figures out how to use it to seal the rifts without hurting either universe or himself, he's much better off staying in Blue universe.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Just in case I get some people who read my previous post and think "Well, the two Olivias look identical.", let me disabuse you of that right now. The two Olivias look NEARLY identical, but other than that they're two different personalities. Even though Red dyed her hair, she still is nothing like Olivia.

Now to the dumbing-down. Walter, in several episodes, could deduce Olivia's moods even when she wasn't saying anything. He spent two years with her, he should know her in and out, and as I said, Red is nothing like Olivia. He's a genius, trained to observe since he's a scientist and he can't tell he has the wrong Olivia? Give me a break, he should have noticed within a day or two. Writers have dumbed him down.

Peter, in the S2 ender, was talking to Red and telling her that he liked her hair better (though his tone of voice and facial expressions said otherwise). He also mentions that, while they do look nearly identical, one of the Olivias (can't remember which he said) had darker eyes than the other. Now, back in Blue universe and half a season is nearing and he hasn't noticed the difference in eye tone like he did upon first meeting? Dumbed-down, he should have noticed within a day or two, after all, he's also a genius, son of a scientist and a scientist himself, so he should be that observant.

It's writer contrivance to keep Red in the BlueVerse for a longer period of time. She should not have been able to fool them for that long, she was sent over there knowing nothing about Olivia except what she gleaned in that short meeting at her place where they fought before Olivia dyed her hair to pass as Red to go get Peter. Red does not have a photographic memory, Peter should have noticed her hesitation in the last episode when he asked for the list of numbers, he should have noticed when she appeared not to remember the bookseller, he should put two and two together and realize that shapeshifters keep dying around her before they can capture them and that their dorsal doohickeys are mysteriously being rendered unusable. The clues are there, the writers have Walter and Peter blind to them, even though they're the most observant of people otherwise.

I decided to change my avatar. As you can see, it's an infamous picture of Horatio Caine removing his shades. I doubt it's the one I'm thinking of (the ep where it's implied he beat the stuffing out of a pedophile), but it reminds me so much of that ep since he did remove his shades just before (or just after) that infamous line "You're resisting arrest." I have to say that is my favorite scene out of all of the CSI: Miami eps I've ever seen. I haven't watched it much since just after H went to SA and killed all those people (Another favorite line of mine-"Mala Noches justice, meet Miami justice." *Pow*) because I just don't watch television like I used to. Hub has control of the remote, however, he does give me control of it on Thursday nights at 8:00pm when I watch the only show that really interests me-Fringe.

Now, I really do like to watch Fringe, but I have to say I'm pretty disappointed in S3 so far. Not in content exactly, but because they essentially erased Olivia Dunham and gave us two alt-Olivias to watch every week with only glimpses of the original Olivia peeking through now and then. Then they dumbed-down both Walter and Peter so they wouldn't notice the difference as quickly as they should have (like within a day or two at the most, IMO). Since it looks like the brainwashing is about to be resolved, hopefully the show will get better. I'm not impressed with the eps from the alternate universe-if they were meant to evoke sympathy for the alt-characters, they did a piss-poor job of it because the more I watch them the more I want to assassinate Walternate. As for HarveyPeter, I actually don't object to that too much, though really we should have had a HarveyOlivia of some kind instead since he represents her real self trying to reassert herself. But I also understand that Joshua Jackson was paid to appear in every episode, so this was a plausible way to do that. I'm hoping tonight's episode is going to see her finally getting home and Red either getting caught or forced to run. Either way, I want to shoot her and the writers for putting her in bed with Peter, that was unnecessary-they didn't put Olivia into bed with Frank, did they? No, they actually had her practically running from him like he had malaria when he kissed her. What's wrong with giving lead characters happily-ever-afters now and then instead of almost-getting-togethers/postponing-get-together, because we just know that this little escapade of hers is going to delay Peter/Olivia really getting together, if they actually allow that at all. Come on writers, be original for once, give them happy-ever-after! We're (or at least I'm) getting sick of the hero getting the girl, then she dies, or almost getting the girl, then she dies, or delayed getting the girl because someone else/twin sleeps with him, fostering mistrust/angst on her part/angst on his.

Now, I'm not against angst, but it's getting overused these days, especially to keep people apart. Why do the writers not want their characters to be happily mated? Notice I said mated and not married-two entirely different things. Is it because it will upset the fans who daydream about bedding the character themselves? Do they simply like to read all the fanfiction from 'shippers who put them together anyway just to see the different ways it's done? What? Writers, please explain yourselves. The only people I know of who are truly happy being alone are Aromantic Asexuals, and as we've seen, Peter and Olivia are far from asexual. Personally, if your reasoning is that you wouldn't be able to put them into bed with just anyone if they were in a romantic relationship with each other then that is the flimsiest reason of all-I actually severely dislike any tv/movie character who bed-hops on a regular basis, that is not a message I would want my grandchildren to learn from any tv show.

You know, speaking of fanfiction (I did in my previous post), it's a good way for fans of certain shows to show off their favorite characters in ways that they think they should be. It may not always be in ways other fans might think is appropriate, but hey, life is a jigsaw puzzle and no two pieces are the same, but they fit together to show the whole picture.

Huh, since when did I become philosophical? I guess we do get smarter, or at least more sensible, as we get some age on us. At least most of us do, I suppose.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I don't really think I'm a good fanfiction writer, I prefer to make up my own characters and my own scenarios-usually choosing a slightly sci-fi/fantasy type setting. However, the definition of fanfiction as defined by Wiki means I've probably done a fanfiction story or two. I'm actually working on one based on Dragon Age: Origins using one of my avatars as a main character and one of DA:O's as a second lead and using several other characters in bit parts. However, I could never do fanfiction like my aforementioned British friend can-take episodes from every season and write up her original character in them, stay mostly true to said episode and insert her own original plots. Essentially, she's taking each season and rewriting them to her own liking. No one is likely going to read them as she's so private, and I only get glimpses of what she's really writing since I help her with main plot points when she's stuck. What I like to do is borrow the characters for COs or AUs, so I guess I do fanfiction once in awhile, and, like my friend, no one is likely to read much of what I write since I keep almost all of it private, with a few exceptions on FictionPress of a couple of original stories I wrote. One might be considered fanfiction since I borrowed a few characters from a tv show and stuck them in it, so it's likely slightly fanfiction AU. However it's mostly original characters so I'm leaving it where it is. I guess the fanfiction world is also a jigsaw puzzle, no one writes the same story as anyone else but it somehow all fits together in the end.

So, let's not worry about whether we're a good writer or not and just have fun however we can.

I have a friend who lives in England (I live in the SEUS) and we've been talking over MSN for the better part of four years now, pretty much ever since she started university over there to learn to be a CSI, specializing in forensic biology. Yes, I'm old enough to be her mother, but age is not, and should never be, a factor when it comes to making friends.

Anyway, we like to do what we call arcs-writing stories together. I also help her with her fanfiction which she writes, mainly about CSI Miami, NY and Fringe. I won't go into specifics because she's a very private person (which is why I'm not giving her name or handle. She's very good at weaving her own unique character into the plots that interest her from the various seasons and we write back and forth in a fairly unique manner, not in prose style, she translates all that we do into that. It's more like...well this:

Charlie: *Glances up when Broyles walks in.* How's it going?

Get it? Good. We also sometimes just did what we called games where she would 'borrow' characters/worlds/whatever from any show/movie/vidgame that caught her fancy, then we would add in our own made-up characters, she would come up with a plot and we'd take off. Now, some of you would think that's silly-an old woman and a young ladyl playing games like that most of the day, and it probably is, but it's also a lot of fun and much more satisfying than say....going out, getting drunk, screwing someone you picked up wherever you got drunk at, then waking up and not even remembering what you did or who the hell that was in bed with you. Me, I prefer to remember when I had a good time, as well as who I had a good time with and going out to find sex is not my idea of a good time. Sex is for procreation only and I've never seen where it's so much fun that I just had to go out looking for it. If that bothers some people, then oh well, my husband is quite enough to keep me home and at least he knows where I'm at when I'm sitting at my laptop.

But enough about all that. We pretty much stopped our games, after several years it was hard for either of us to come up with unique plots to play so now I just co-write fanfic with her.